The second anniversary of the comprehensive escalation of the Ukrainian crisis: Have Russia-Ukraine strategic goals been achieved?
China News Weekly reporter/Cao Ran
Published in the 1129th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on February 26, 2024
The battle for the city of Avdeyevka in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, lasted for six months and ended with the Russian army's full occupation of the town on February 18.
This is also the first major change in the front lines between the two sides since the Russian army occupied Bakhmut, an important town in the northern Donetsk region in May 2023.
For Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky, the battle for Avdeyevka obviously has political significance: in March this year, Putin will participate in the Russian presidential election.
For Zelensky, this game will test whether his decision to change coaches before the battle is correct.
On the second anniversary of the full-scale outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis, both Russia and Ukraine claimed to have achieved their strategic goals.
But from the overall perspective of the conflict, neither side achieved their goals.
Occupying two more small towns is far from achieving the basic goal of the "special military operation" proposed by Putin on February 24, 2022: to control the entire Donetsk Oblast.
This winter, the Russian army's renewed air strikes failed to collapse the energy-scarce Ukrainian society.
On the other side, the Ukrainian army’s summer counteroffensive in 2023 failed to cross the Dnieper River on the southern front and recapture the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.
Since then, Zelensky and his generals have been engaged in endless urban defense and air defense wars.
Occasional gains from drone and unmanned boat attacks are not enough to change Russia's general trend of regaining the initiative on the battlefield. The loss of confidence of Western allies puts Ukraine's "Patriotic War" at risk of falling into a vicious cycle.
Entering 2024, Russia and Ukraine are still trying to win this long-term war.
But the war situation has undergone subtle changes after the Battle of Avdeyevka.
Michael Kaufman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that Ukraine can no longer engage in such costly small-town wars.
"At this stage, the West neither expects nor wants a brief, isolated battlefield victory in Ukraine, and the best strategy is not to enter a costly stalemate."
Kortunov, the former director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council, believes that returning to a dominant position has made Russia increasingly confident. Variable factors such as the U.S. election have made it possible that this "international war" will gradually be downgraded to a Russian-Ukrainian war as European and American aid withdraws. “regional war” between
But for now, neither side is exhausted on the battlefield, and hope for peace remains slim.
Ukrainian army changes coach before battle
At 2 a.m. local time on February 17, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Sirsky officially issued a withdrawal order.
With the help of friendly forces and cover of night, the remnants of the Ukrainian Army's 110th Motorized Rifle Brigade, which had been stationed in Avdeyevka city and factories for nearly half a year, withdrew from the western suburbs with difficulty.
The encircled Russian army only left a gap of several kilometers from north to south, blocked the Ukrainian army's retreat route with firepower, and used small drones to attack along the way.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the Ukrainian army lost more than 1,500 people on the day of its final withdrawal.
Grant, a retired British military officer who provides advisory services to the Ukrainian army, bluntly told the "Kyiv Independent" that the 110th Brigade "was actually annihilated."
In the battle of Avdeyevka, Ukraine could have won another war of attrition.
Starting from the fierce attack on the town on October 10, 2023, the Russian army spent nearly half a year and only advanced the front line less than 10 kilometers.
Before what the Ukrainian army called the "best time to retreat" from New Year's Day to early February this year, Ukrainian data showed that the Russian army suffered about 20,000 casualties and lost more than 500 tanks and armored vehicles in Avdeyevka.
However, a poor retreat narrowed the gap in battle losses between the two sides, and also caused the Ukrainian army to lose its two most experienced combat units: the 110th Brigade, which had held on for the longest time in Avdeevka, and the 110th Brigade on February 15. The 3rd Commando Brigade, the Ukrainian Army's "First Elite in Land Warfare", was temporarily transferred to cover the retreat of the unit.
Michael Kaufman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, and Franz Gadi, a researcher at the U.S. Institute for International Strategic Studies (IISS), who have been invited to the front lines of the Ukrainian military for many times to investigate, recently wrote an article warning that although Ukraine is under Avdeev Ka's battle losses may be only a quarter of the Russian army's, but the Ukrainian army's most experienced and valuable soldiers are converted into "consumable soldiers" whose army size is much larger than that of its opponents.
Kaufman and Gadi's field observations found that the newly formed brigade-level units of the Ukrainian army are far inferior to the "old brigades".
The 3rd Commando Brigade was trained for a long time in Bahmut.
The 110th Brigade is composed of reserve officers and soldiers, and its "foundation" is not good. Its experience was gained in the blood sea of Avdeyevka.
Losing the main force of these two troops is an unbearable disaster for the Ukrainian army.
Why does tragedy happen?
Ukrainian people complained that Western military aid did not arrive in time, resulting in the Ukrainian army on the front line being at a disadvantage in terms of equipment confrontation and ammunition reserves.
Officers and soldiers of the 59th Brigade of the Ukrainian Army revealed that during the counteroffensive in the autumn of 2022, each tank of the unit was allocated 120 rounds of artillery shells, while in Avdeyevka, each tank was allocated only 15 to 20 rounds of artillery shells.
The brigade's multiple rocket launcher company is equipped with rocket launchers that can fire 40 salvos at a time. However, due to a shortage of ammunition, they can only fire "one at a time". "The rocket artillery has become an ordinary artillery force."
On the other hand, most Western analysts believe that the bigger problem in Ukraine is the command from the top.
Kaufman pointed out that as the war entered February, the loss of the town was inevitable, and preparations for the withdrawal should have begun long ago.
On February 8, the Russian army entered the urban area of Avdeyevka and took control of the main strongholds in the southern suburbs. Artillery fire covered the Ukrainian army's communication lines.
But in fact, it took another week for the Ukrainian army high command to make the decision to withdraw.
Ukraine's "Kiev Independent" quoted Ukrainian army sources as saying that during this period, decisions on reinforcements of the 110th Brigade and other decisions involving the Avdeyevka front line were also delayed many times.
The delays come at a time of intense conflict between Ukraine's leadership and military.
On February 8, when the Russian army entered the town, Zelensky replaced the supreme commander of the Ukrainian army in Zaluzhne with Army Commander-in-Chief Silsky.
Since February 2022, Zaluzhny has been the most important leader of the Ukrainian army.
Some Ukrainian media even suspected that his excessive political reputation was the real reason for Zelensky's change of coach before the battle.
To be sure, Silski and Zaluzhny were very different.
The former is described as "if the president tells him something, he will do it." The conflict between the latter and Zelensky has long been made public.
On the day of the change of command, an official from the presidential office revealed to the media that Zelensky "wanted a combat plan, but Zaluzhny always responded with 'give me more troops and more artillery shells.'"
The American "Politician" magazine pointed out that it was rationality on the battlefield that made Zaluzhny a key leader in maintaining the cohesion of the Ukrainian army.
Silsky, who was "loyal to his superiors", "will not hesitate to put soldiers in danger in order to achieve his goals" to his subordinates, earning him the nickname "The Butcher".
After a Ukrainian soldier learned that the "Butcher" had come to power, he told his comrades: "We are all screwed."
Silsky's plan was to hold on to Avdeyevka until the end.
For Zelensky, this will help win over Western military aid and convince the public that does not trust the decision to change the commander-in-chief.
However, it is difficult for outsiders to know Silski's specific plans.
Analysts speculate that he wants to create a "second Mariupol" using a coke plant with a network of underground tunnels on the outskirts of Avdeevka.
But apparently, he didn't have an escape plan ready.
In Avdeyevka's last moments, the frontline commanders no longer fully obeyed the "butcher"'s orders.
Officers and soldiers of the 110th Brigade revealed to the media that commanders from other brigades once came to inspect the frontline positions, and after seeing "how bad the situation was," they directly refused to send their own soldiers to "die."
In this case, the defenders, who lacked reinforcements, were forced to send artillery without ammunition to the first line of defense.
It was not until February 15 that the 3rd Commando Brigade entered the Avdeyevka flank position, but it was too late.
The “rules of the game” in a war of attrition
On February 18, the day after the Ukrainian army withdrew from Avdeyevka, the Russian army continued to advance along the direction of the Ukrainian army's retreat. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that it had advanced about 8 kilometers.
After the Battle of Bahmut in May 2023, Russia and Ukraine are still fighting over Bahmut in units of kilometers or even hundreds of meters.
In comparison, the Russian army's progress this time has been relatively rapid.
The Ukrainian army relied on the residential areas around Avdeyevka to continuously block the attack, and concentrated its main force on the second line of defense.
The American think tank "Institute of War" (ISW) pointed out that the Russian army currently maintains firepower and air superiority and has an advantage in the clearing operations around Avdeyevka, but it is difficult to expand its results.
On the one hand, since the failure of the major counteroffensive in the autumn of 2023, the Ukrainian high command has learned from the Russian army’s experience in establishing a second line of defense and began to cooperate with private contractors to build a rear defense line in November.
Images obtained by the "War Research Institute" show that the Ukrainian army has a relatively complete defensive position west of Avdeyevka.
On the other hand, after the Battle of Avdeyevka, Western intelligence agencies did not discover that the Russian army mobilized new troops from other fronts to the Donetsk battlefield.
Since February, the Russian army has launched new offensives in the border areas of Kharkiv and Luhansk regions in the north and in the western region of Zaporozhye region in the south. However, Western intelligence agencies have also not discovered that the Russian general Donets The reserve forces on the battlefield were transferred to other places.
Kortunov, the former director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council, also believes that after the Russian army achieves a political victory, the war between Russia and Ukraine will return to stalemate and consumption in 2024.
In the war of attrition in 2024, what are the main difficulties and uncertainties faced by Russia and Ukraine?
Some Russian military bloggers believe that the problem for the Moscow High Command is how to resolve the contradiction between the "expendable troops" and the regular army.
After the Battle of Bakhmut in May 2023, the conflict between Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Organization, a Russian private military entity that suffered the most losses in the battle, and the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense intensified, eventually leading to a "mutiny."
Although Prigozhin surrendered and died, the Russian army lost an important infantry offensive force.
Today, this scene is being repeated after the war in Avdeyevka.
After the battle, Putin congratulated General Mordichev, the frontline commander of the Russian army and commander of Army Group Center. The Ministry of Defense also emphasized Mordichev's achievements.
This caused dissatisfaction with other "irregular troops" who also participated in the war.
According to some Russian military bloggers, the Donetsk separatist armed "First Corps of the Donetsk People's Republic" and the volunteer battalion-type "Veteran" assault brigade have undertaken the most critical tasks with the most casualties on the front line.
In Ukraine, many Western consultants believe that Zelensky and the Ukrainian military command are overly obsessed with "technology" and will cause the Ukrainian army to lose in a long-term war of attrition.
In January of this year, Zelensky appointed Sukhalevsky and Lebedenko, who had been responsible for technology research and development in the military, as deputy commander-in-chief Silsky, and specifically stated that this was to "invest in new technologies." Enable better practice”.
In this regard, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Kimmitt pointed out that new technology equipment often means “tens of millions of dollars worth of launchers, dozens of support vehicles and hundreds of soldiers to repair and supply".
After visiting the front-line positions in Ukraine, Gustav Gressel, a senior researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, also pointed out that the challenges of modern warfare are mainly command coordination and logistics, and what the Ukrainian army needs to add more is experience in this area.
Zelensky’s emphasis on technical equipment is a microcosm of the confusion in the military doctrine of the Ukrainian army.
In the past year, the Ukrainian army's performance on the battlefield was not as good as the counteroffensive in the autumn of 2022. This is not only because the "veterans are dead", but also because the Ukrainian army has accepted more NATO-style military training and military theories.
"Russian forces manoeuvre to fire, Western forces fire to manoeuvre" (Russian forces manoeuvre to fire, Western forces fire to manoeuvre) summarizes the military doctrine that Russia and Ukraine inherited from the Soviet era that emphasizes firepower.
Gresel pointed out that in the past year, the Russian army has focused its development and training on artillery command, communication, and coordination, and has shortened the response time to artillery strikes on Ukraine from the previous 20 to 30 minutes to 3 minutes.
This basically means that the Western advanced firepower weapons used by the Ukrainian army in the autumn of 2022 to cooperate with ground troops’ offensive model can no longer be replicated. “The enemy’s 20-minute (reaction time) can allow our mechanized troops to take advantage of this gap to complete a surprise attack. But 3 minutes is definitely not enough.”
Looking back at the Ukrainian army, in 2023, the Ukrainian army was obsessed with long-range drone attacks on the Russian mainland and even Moscow that did not pose a real threat but had propaganda significance.
During the Munich Security Conference in February 2024, NATO announced an increase of 1 million drones in assistance to Ukraine.
Zelensky said that in addition to this, Ukraine will produce another 1 million drones.
However, Kaufman and Gadi observed on the front line that the Ukrainian army's combat model placed too much emphasis on maneuverability, "frequently made mistakes" in coordinating artillery strikes, and command coordination was often limited to the company level.
Therefore, although both sides are facing ammunition shortages, on specific battlefields, the Russian army still maintains a 5:1 firepower advantage in most battles. No amount of drones will help reverse this disadvantage.
After NATO countries invested US$35 billion in military and security assistance, Western military experts are reflecting on what kind of help is useful to the Ukrainian military.
Kimmitt, a theoretical expert on the US military, recently admitted that on Russia-Ukraine, a "modern battlefield similar to World War I," "nothing can weaken the enemy's will to fight more than a few hours of artillery fire."
Kaufman and Gadi also emphasized in the report that in order to maximize the chance of final victory, the Ukrainian army should focus on the destructive power of the front line, "prioritizing firepower over maneuvering, by causing larger numbers of personnel than one's own." and material losses to reduce the enemy's combat capabilities."
“Western equipment can enhance the survivability of Ukrainian soldiers, but they cannot change the rules of the game,” the report reads.
Which Western ally will retreat first?
While Ukraine is still thinking about a protracted war, Zelensky's Western allies are considering their own "exit methods."
During the Munich Security Conference, the lively signing ceremony of the "Bilateral Security Cooperation Agreement" between Ukraine, Germany and France, and Danish Prime Minister Frederiksen's bold words about "bringing out all artillery to support Ukraine" could not hide the fact that comprehensive military assistance is In recent years, Europe's help to Ukraine has been "regressing".
Taking the 155mm artillery shells that Ukraine needs most as an example, in March 2023, the European Commission proposed a plan to deliver 1 million artillery shells within one year.
But in fact, of the 2.3 million artillery shells used by the Ukrainian army last year, only 300,000 came from European stocks, and the joint production plan has been postponed to this year.
And due to limitations in the upstream industrial chain, it takes 6 to 9 months to produce a whole shell.
Therefore, Frederiksen's speech in Munich was in fact a retreat from the plan.
She emphasized that Europe should not focus on production, but on "support with inventories."
As for the advanced weapons assistance plan such as the F-16 fighter jet that has not yet been implemented, many military experts have discovered clues.
Gressel pointed out that most policy discussions in Europe today focus on so-called "new weapons" and completely avoid discussions on "production and supply beyond the Russian defense industrial system."
"As long as the calculations show that Russia can ultimately win at the expense of weapons, Russia can choose to continue the current way of war."
It is not unknown to European leaders that these "lip service" discussions could be fatal for Ukraine, but they have no other choice.
First of all, aid to Ukraine is a "bottomless pit."
The latest assessment released by the World Bank on February 15 shows that the two-year conflict has caused direct economic losses to Russia of more than 150 billion US dollars, but at the same time, Ukraine's recovery and reconstruction costs have also risen to 486 billion US dollars.
Jean-Marc Riqueli, a senior fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy who worked on the International Peace Conference on Ukraine, pointed out that the huge cost of aid has led to public fatigue.
A poll released by the European Council on Foreign Relations on January 17 this year covering most EU member states showed that among the EU’s 372 million voting-age voters, 74 million believed that climate change was the primary crisis facing Europe, and 71 million were most concerned about it. Economic recession, 58 million people regard immigration as the biggest problem.
By comparison, 50 million people focused on the crisis in Ukraine.
More importantly, if Europe wants to solve climate change and economic crises, global cooperation is essential, and this also means whether to rethink the relationship between Europe and Russia.
Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, also pointed out that across the Atlantic, "a consensus is emerging in Washington: the United States needs to engage with Moscow after the 2024 election."
If it moves slower than the United States in this regard, Europe will suffer the consequences.
On the second anniversary of the full-scale crisis in Ukraine, Gresel wrote an article proposing the three most likely directions for the war.
In the "most negative" hypothesis, he described: Trump successfully became the U.S. presidential candidate, and his opposition to military aid to Ukraine and his support for dialogue and contact with Russia are growing; Republicans in Congress put party competition first and will not do anything under any circumstances. It does not accept the bill deal proposed by the Biden administration on the military aid budget to Ukraine; the United States' retreat has caused panic to sweep across Europe, and most countries have chosen to stop delivering supplies to Ukraine to strengthen strategic autonomy.
"I think they (Europeans) should think about this problem: They want to weaken Russia, but this conflict actually weakens Europe." Kortunov, the former director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, predicted that if the conflict continues for a long time, One may see a "slow recovery" of some links between Europe and Russia.
Finally, after the new round of Gaza crisis in October 2023, Ukraine supported Israel and stood on the opposite side of the Arab world, Muslim countries and the "Global South" in the Middle East, making European countries that did not support Israel's comprehensive military action against Gaza feel Difficult.
“Western countries are no longer able to frame the Ukrainian issue as a just cause that everyone must support,” said Zachary Paikin, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Geneva. “In the past few months, Ukraine has been selling its Ten Points of Peace to the world. The opportunity for planning has completely disappeared.”
Against this background, in January this year, during the fourth round of discussions on the international peace process on Ukraine at the Davos Forum, officials and experts from Switzerland, the host, emphasized that Europe must discuss Russia in detail with the "Global South" The solution to the Ukrainian conflict.
Bideau, spokesman for the Swiss Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that all parties have formed ten expert working groups on Zelensky's ten-point peace plan to assess whether Ukraine's proposal "is mature enough to participate in the peace process."
"China News Weekly" Issue 7, 2024
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